How Planview Became Its Own Case Study in Agile Transformation
Transformation looks different from organization to organization, but there is one common truth for all of us: it is a journey.
At Planview, we’ve been leaders in project portfolio management (PPM) solutions for more than 30 years, but it became clear that our market was evolving, and our customers were changing. We saw an opportunity to grow dramatically, but we knew it required a transformation of our own to make it a reality. We became our own case study in Agile transformation, using an inspect and adapt approach that would ultimately help us better understand our customers’ journey.
Agile novices often misunderstand the methodology and Manifesto when they discover Agile. At Planview, we certainly had our own misconceptions. Our software development teams had been using Agile methodologies for over a decade, so how much more Agile could we get?
But our customers and the market were starting to evolve beyond our traditional portfolio management product lines, and we needed to adapt in order to deliver the products and solutions they required. As a company, we needed not only to advance our strategy but also to change at an operational level.
After considering our organic and inorganic growth options, we took our first step toward agility with the acquisition of LeanKit in December 2017. LeanKit was (and still is) a highly regarded market leader with a great enterprise Kanban product. We were confident that this acquisition would boost our Agile credibility in the market, and our sales teams would sell LeanKit and the value of “Agile” just like they were selling our existing products. Certainly, this Agile DNA and product infusion would catalyze our Agile transformation as an organization.
For almost a year, we operated as though transformation would just happen. We had sporadic successes but not the change we had hoped for – or the one we needed.
At the end of 2018, we took our second step to change our corporate priorities from the top. We added a company-wide goal to rewire our organization and business through a new Agile Growth Initiative. The objectives were simple:
Our rewiring was about change, but with a continuous improvement and continuous learning approach. We were committed to bringing along everyone who was up for the journey; it didn’t mean firing everyone. What it meant was committing to:
Unlike most organizations, we started our Agile Growth Initiative in marketing, not product or IT. Although the product teams could be improved, they had already been Agile for a decade. And product was not where the biggest opportunity existed (or so we thought); it was in the go-to-market and marketing departments where we were feeling the challenges of change. So we hired Agile-first marketers and an Agile coach with a marketing background.
With these few new team members onboard, we facilitated a low-prep, nearly ad hoc Agile discovery session. We brought together sales, marketing, and product leaders and asked them to list their priorities. No one had the same ones. This was not surprising. Everyone in the business was running as fast and as hard as they could, but we were not moving forward at the pace we wanted. Scaling across functions was our core challenge.
Next, we asked leaders to list their top three priorities. Those three business priorities aligned with our product and solutions goals, resulting in an experiment. We created three cross-functional Agile teams as part of our first Go-to-Market (GTM) Agile Release Train (ART). Three weeks later, we held our first Program Increment (PI) Planning event. We planned together across functions (as a value stream) for the first time in company history, using our leaders’ top three priorities and the Agile Growth Initiative as our North Star. That first PI Planning event was ugly – truly brutal in every possible way – but we learned a lot. Putting 50+ people from different business functions together for three days forced some hard conversations that ultimately resulted in reorganizations and the realignment of people and funds.
Out of that first PI Planning event, we quickly realized that the GTM ART needed sharper outcomes and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to work toward. Not only did the GTM ART need outcomes, but as a business, we needed to have everyone aligned with the same goal – a much clearer focus on delivering value to our customers.
We took a hard look at what provided value to the customer. It wasn’t individual products, but it was solutions – multiple products that, when combined, solved business problems in truly unique ways. By asking our GTM teams to be solution (versus product) oriented, a laser focus was placed on our product teams to enable end-to-end solutions to deliver customer value in new ways. With a similar beginning as our GTM ART, we didn’t overthink; we got our product leaders in a room, hashed out enough details to get started, and collectively got on strategy.
Along our journey (with marketing, product, and sales), we established and committed to Agile ceremonies and cadences. We created Lean Portfolio Management meetings, Scrum Master Centers of Practice, Agile Centers of Practice, Voice of Customer meetings, Delivery Steering, Demos, and Retrospectives. Our commitment to these ceremonies allows us to continuously improve and evolve, and they are a critical piece of our transformation journey.
Throughout this entire experience, we learned that people are resilient. If you provide the “why” and empower them, they will figure out how to deliver their best work. And through this transformation journey, we feel we have. Recently, our efforts were recognized by a leading analyst, Gartner. Planview was recognized as a Leader in the Gartner 2020 Enterprise Agile Planning Tools Magic Quadrant, and we believe our transformation is the reason why. Not bad for a 30-year-old PPM company.
Download the Gartner 2020 Enterprise Agile Planning Tools Magic Quadrant to learn more about Planview.
How Planview Became Its Own Case Study in Agile Transformation
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